I paint a little every day

Cultivate Creativity?

Unfortunately I don’t know how to do this so I can’t enlighten anyone. I’ve been told that creativity is just something you have, or don’t. I don’t believe this. Everyone is creative in some fashion, although if you are arguing that some people are more creative more of the time then I might agree. Some people think outside the box most, or at least more of the time. I’ve known some of these people and capricious would be a charitable description. Unbalanced would be less charitable.

There is no doubt that thinking outside the box is very useful at times. Businesses love this catch phrase. The trick is to be able to turn it off and on, and use it successfully. If I’m stuck, and this happens often, I usually turn to Google and see what other artists have done. What I see is usually nothing that I might do but it can inspire a different thought process that brings me out of my funk.

I don’t have to look at anything even remotely similar to what I’ve been doing. Just looking at a completely different visualisation can set me on a new train of thought. I don’t think of myself as creative; I think of myself as a problem solver. Solutions can be myriad and most of them can work so I just keep painting. I often get a little bored with this process. My solution has always been to just keep painting. If I only manage 10 minutes a day that’s fine. I’m still painting.